


Dust, Shadow, Mallorn, Tower, and Sea

by psocoptera



Series: Thirty Fic [11]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 30Fic, F/M, Going over the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-24
Updated: 2007-12-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam, and Radagast, and Elanor the Fair.  A story about wizards and Hobbits and the long way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust, Shadow, Mallorn, Tower, and Sea

I.  
In a moment of desperation, Sam slips a pinch of Galadriel's dust into Frodo's tea. Frodo's pallor has worried him, the way he rubs his shoulder and clutches at Arwen's gem around his neck.

No sooner has he sprinkled the silvery dust than Sam is stricken by fear: he pictures a sudden shoot of new growth from the scarred stump of the finger, a sapling pushing forward, lengthening, opening into leaves and slender branches.

Frodo comes in while he stands there, lifts the cup, and drinks it.

Nothing happens, and the elven dust fails to make him flourish.

Later, Sam thinks of the Ent-draught and wonders why Merry and Pippin did not invite Frodo along to drink it.

II.  
After the Shadow has blown away, and Dol Guldur been thrown down, and the waters run clean under new green leaves, Radagast wonders if he'll receive a summons home. He does not.

It has been many years since he has heard from his blue brothers in the east and south; maybe they've long since finished and gone. Mithrandir's deeds he knows, and Curundir has blown away like the Shadow.

He visits Tom Bombadil and they trade songs about birds, or maybe birdsongs.

He spends awhile taming Wargs, until they can pass for hyena or wolf.

Mithrandir sails away with the elves, and never comes to say farewell.

Radagast supposes he could sail himself, but it has been a very long time since he came from over the sea, and he is not sure he remembers the way back.

III.  
Elanor marries Fastred at Mid-year's Day beneath the mallorn-tree, three months after her thirtieth birthday. Sam is bursting with pride but also sadness; he'd never thought he'd be giving her away before she'd even come of age. He had given her into Queen Arwen's service, but he and Rosie had gone with her to Gondor. Greenholm is just on the edge of the Shire, and Sam knows that isn't really very far away, but he also knows how leaving can take you much further than you ever would have thought.

The week before the wedding passes for Elanor in a frenzy of hemming and baking and weaving wreathes of apple-blossom. While she works, she sings in her high clear voice, the old songs of the Shire sung to her in her cradle, songs of Men from Minas Tirith, songs of the Elves that Arwen taught her and the other maids. Birds come and warble to her and she trills back to them.

"Oh," Sam says, bringing her another armload of apple-blossom. "He used to sing that one."

"Frodo?" she asks, slipping her hand into his. She doesn't really need to ask.

"I wish he could be here for this. I write it all down in the Red Book like I was telling it to him, but it's not the same. He'd be just as proud as I am, our little Elanorelle barely out of her tweens and all grown up."

"Which is it?" she laughs, and sings a few silly lines about a fledgling bird to cheer his heart.

"Sing the other one again?" her father asks, and she does.

IV.  
Elanor has lived three years in the Tower Hills when the wizard appears in her garden. She is wrestling with what will someday be the cabbage-beds - the burrows are all nicely dug out, but there's years of work to do in the gardens before things get settled - and she's singing a rather angry song about smiting and smashing when she sees the gaunt figure in brown robes and squeaks to a stop.

He peers at her curiously. "My friends told me about a little golden bird who sings in three voices from one throat," he says. She sees that there are starlings perched in his hair, and the shoulders of his cloak are limed white.

"Hello," she says, "Ah... mae govannen?"

She asks him in, and feeds him tea and toasted cheese (the starlings stay outside, but at the table a shrew creeps out of his pocket to take nibbles of cheese from his fingers), and sings him a song about bumblebees.

"Mithrandir always liked Hobbits," he says.

Radagast turns up regularly after that, although not in any pattern; they may find him on the doorstep on a sunny morning or spot his long shadow coming over the snow at sunset. Sam is there sometimes, and they'll stay up late by the fire, or he'll sit down on the floor with Elfstan and show him strange seedpods and snailshells and feathers from his many pockets.

One clear autumn day she packs provisions and they climb the Hills to the top where the Elf-towers stand, she and Fastred and Elfstan, and Firiel in a sling on her back, and Sam, and the wizard. Radagast opens the hidden door of the tower he calls _Elostirion_ and as they wind up its many, many, steps, he tells them that it was built by Gil-galad, when Elendil came out of Numenor. "It was already old when I came to these shores," he says.

"Gil-galad was an Elven king!" Elfstan pipes up.

Elanor can scarcely believe there is any of the world they cannot see from the top, although she knows better; she and Fastred and the children run from window to window, exclaiming at the hills and woods of the Shire across the moors, and the long low glitter of the great Gulf to the west.

"I think I can see the Water, Mama!" Elfstan near-shrieks. "I can see Hobbiton where Sam-Grandpa lives!"

Elanor thinks there should be too many hills in the way, but she almost fancies she can see it too, a smudge in the distance that is somehow even greener than the green that surrounds it, and - could it be possible - a tiny gold fleck that is the mallorn.

"Hm," Sam coughs, looking over her shoulder at that brighter green, "Suppose I did favor Hobbiton a bit with Galadriel's gift."

While the Hobbits look out, Radagast looks within, but the pedestal in the center of the room is empty, and the tower is bare down to the stone walls of anything else.

"The Stone is gone and I cannot see the Road," he says lowly to Sam as they spiral back down the stairs, and Elanor hears and wonders what road he seeks.

V.  
Rose passes on Mid-year's Day, thirty years and one to the day since Elanor's wedding. After they lay her to rest, when the other mourners move to the heavily-laden tables, the wizard comes out of the trees to where Sam stands, stone-still. He kneels down and places his hands in the earth, and rose-canes slowly sprout and crawl to cover the grave, blooming until the grave is hidden by pink.

Before he turns to leave, he unwraps Sam's hand and places within it a white gull feather, folding his hand back around it gently.

Sam comes to Elanor in the Hills that fall with the Red Book, and tells her he won't leave if she needs him to stay.

"Oh, Sam-Dad," she says. "You gave me to Minas Tirith and then to Fastred when you must have wanted nothing better than to keep all of us children snug tight in Bag End with you and Mama. I understand now, with my own. Frodo gave you to us, long ago, he stepped out from the center so that you could... like the heart of the bud gives up its hold on the rose," she says. "But it's time for us to give you back to him."

He weeps a little and tells her he is leaving her the Book.

"Won't you need it to tell Frodo how it has been?" she asks.

He tells her that he thinks he'll remember.

She sings for him, the songs he sang her in the cradle, the other songs he hopes to hear again at last. She sings him down the path to where Radagast stands waiting, finally finding his way to the sea.


End file.
